WootBot

Time again for another march toward t-shirt doom! Discuss this week's life-or-death struggle for sales supremacy as chronicled on the Reckoning page all week long.

Here's how the Reckoning week runs now: every Tuesday at midnight, we retire the previous week's lowest-selling shirts and launch
this here discussion thread. Tuesday around noon we'll post the all-new, all-early Reckoning Recon. On Friday, we'll juice demand and
prime the pump with a little weekend reminder post. Finally, on the following Monday, the Day of Reckoning post sounds the last call
for the Reckoned shirts. All of those posts will be linked below. Monday night (or Tuesday morning), it starts all over again. The
Reckoning, she is a hungry beast...

grahamcrackercoyote

How much do the artists get of each digital print from the archive? Knowing this might change how a person buys from Woot - artist gets a better deal from $15 sales vs. artist gets a great deal from $18 sales?

j5

grahamcrackercoyote wrote:How much do the artists get of each digital print from the archive? Knowing this might change how a person buys from Woot - artist gets a better deal from $15 sales vs. artist gets a great deal from $18 sales?

The same as at $15. The price increase is due to higher production costs for DTG.

Narfcake

j5 wrote:The same as at $15. The price increase is due to higher production costs for DTG.

Yep. IIRC, products $13 and higher is a $2 commission each, and $1 for items priced below that unless renegotiated.

AFAIK, the fastest DTG printer is the Anajet Sprint, which clocks in at 1:40 for the printing portion; add in the loading and unloading, and production capacity is about 30 shirts/hour. Compared to their screen press, in which the speed is dependent on how fast someone can load shirts on the platens ... meaning 600 shirts/hour after setup time is not out of line.

j5

Narfcake wrote:AFAIK, the fastest DTG printer is the Anajet Sprint, which clocks in at 1:40 for the printing portion; add in the loading and unloading, and production capacity is about 30 shirts/hour. Compared to their screen press, in which the speed is dependent on how fast someone can load shirts on the platens ... meaning 600 shirts/hour after setup time is not out of line.

Assuming they only have one DTG machine (and one screen press for that matter). At a max of 6000 shirts/day, they probably only need one...and a really long day for shirt-folk.

Ginkasa

The loss of The Reckoning puts me in me in a weird position. There've been a few times in the past where there's been a shirt I was maybe interested in, but it was sticking around in The Reckoning, so I could wait. As you might expect, they'd eventually drop off the one week I wasn't paying attention and I'd lose my chance forever to buy.

So, the good news is that I can now buy those shirts and never have to worry about it again.

The bad news is now that they're not going to go away, there's not really any rush to get them purchased, is there?

AdderXYU

Ginkasa wrote:The loss of The Reckoning puts me in me in a weird position. There've been a few times in the past where there's been a shirt I was maybe interested in, but it was sticking around in The Reckoning, so I could wait. As you might expect, they'd eventually drop off the one week I wasn't paying attention and I'd lose my chance forever to buy.

So, the good news is that I can now buy those shirts and never have to worry about it again.

The bad news is now that they're not going to go away, there's not really any rush to get them purchased, is there?

depends. How attached are you to screenprinting and saving three bucks?

wootcrystal

so what happens if one of the previously retired shirts suddenly has -All The People- buying it? Does it get a chance to come back into the race here? I get the Plymoth Rocks getting a chance but the worst seller right now has sold 7 shirts and there have to be old shirts with the re-release that are doing better than that

neuropsychosocial

Sooo... the Reckoning. Anyone glanced at the Reckoning lately? Oh hey, looks like Binge has not fallen further and the newbie labels are still missing.

dcroe05 wrote:OK, I know I was a fringe number-nerd (at best) and really haven't been around all that much since all the changes, but...

Does it bother anyone else that the Top 20 is really the Top 27?

Every time I see that name it's like nails on a chalkboard.

Every.Single.Time.

Actually, each time that I see "Top 20," I think of So You Think You Can Dance. I'm sure that woot's intention was to advertise for a reality show on Fox, right?

wootcrystal wrote:so what happens if one of the previously retired shirts suddenly has -All The People- buying it? Does it get a chance to come back into the race here? I get the Plymoth Rocks getting a chance but the worst seller right now has sold 7 shirts and there have to be old shirts with the re-release that are doing better than that

No, the "Top 20" has nothing to do with the overall twenty-highest-selling shirts; it's basically the old Reckoning under a new and confusing name.

Narfcake

In a way, yes. One starts first, prints the white underbase, then moves onto the next one while it prints the colors.

The bean counters probably fainted when they saw the pace of orders: give the smelling salts a chance to work.

If they did buy a Kornit, they're not celebrating yet. Back in 2007, the shirt press came with an approximate cost of two fully-loaded 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrids. A Kornit Avalanche ... maybe about ten 2013 Toyota Camry Hybrids?

j5

Narfcake wrote:If they did buy a Kornit, they're not celebrating yet. Back in 2007, the shirt press came with an approximate cost of two fully-loaded 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrids. A Kornit Avalanche ... maybe about ten 2013 Toyota Camry Hybrids?

As contrast, the disk storage alone for Woot online operations probably runs on the order of 30 of those Camrys.

neuropsychosocial

Narfcake wrote:If they did buy a Kornit, they're not celebrating yet. Back in 2007, the shirt press came with an approximate cost of two fully-loaded 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrids. A Kornit Avalanche ... maybe about ten 2013 Toyota Camry Hybrids?

j5 wrote:As contrast, the disk storage alone for Woot online operations probably runs on the order of 30 of those Camrys.

In a given year, which product crashes more: EC2, 30 Camrys, or your average DTG unit?

orabbit

Narfcake wrote:Our discussion the other day about side seamed vs. not does raise a question about whether that makes it easier to load them on straight, as there's some point of reference.

The way I do it is by the shoulder seams. You slide the shirt all the down down to the top edge of the platen, grab the corners of the shoulder seams, and pull it back to your mark, i.e. until the collar touches the edge of the platen or something. Side seams can fool you.

ETA - Those Kornits are amazing. Really high quality. I was talking to the Kornit guys at a show, and they said Cafe Press used to run their machines. CP decided it was cheaper to retrofit Epsons, run them into the ground, and toss them in the dumpster, than to buy and maintain Kornits. Thus DTG gets a rotten reputation industry-wide.

Narfcake

orabbit wrote:... CP decided it was cheaper to retrofit Epsons, run them into the ground, and toss them in the dumpster, than to buy and maintain Kornits. Thus DTG gets a rotten reputation industry-wide.

They switched to Belquette Mod1 DTG printers, which I will say has a much quicker ROI. The technology has gotten much better, but there's still room for improvement. None of the DTG printers are truly problem-free yet, and consumable costs are still much higher than traditional screen printing.

orabbit

Narfcake wrote:They switched to Belquette Mod1 DTG printers, which I will say has a much quicker ROI. The technology has gotten much better, but there's still room for improvement. None of the DTG printers are truly problem-free yet, and consumable costs are still much higher than traditional screen printing.

Boy, you sure know an awful lot about DTG Narf. It appears that the Mod1 uses Epson print heads and guts? The Kornit guys made it sound like Cafe Press was doing the retrofitting themselves, not buying printers based on Epson innards. I guess that's marketing for you.

citizencoyote

I wonder if woot's shift to digital POD (that's print on demand for non-writers ) has anything to do with the lower sales numbers we've been observing here in the former reckoning throughout the year. DSRs were declining, the number of votes in the derbies was dropping (with winners getting less than 400 votes at times, and no one approaching the 1K+ votes of years past), and the enthusiasm of followers seemed to be on the decline.

Now, though, everyone is excited again and it sounds like the POD shirts are selling well. So was this something they had planned all along, or did they look at the sales numbers from the past nine months and decide shirt.woot needed a serious sales boost?

neuropsychosocial

Woot-offs starting on a Monday are unusual and both Narf and I will be out of the office this afternoon and unable to grab opening/closing numbers if there's a shirt sale (although I will grab noon numbers in a minute). I think these are some of the most helpful numbers for the artists because they're paid half-commission on woot-off sale shirts and these numbers are the only indication that they get of how many of their sales were woot-off sales. If anyone happens to see the sale open or close, it would be great if you could grab/post the numbers; the links directly to the discussion pages with the sale numbers are below. Thanks!

tjost

Are you sure there was, it doesn't show on the items list on woot proper for the woot-off. I ask too because the numbers don't seem to have moved much and if they did have one this was the weakest woot-off for shirts yet. Odd too since x-mas is so near now.

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